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Anne Hutchinson

Advocate for Religious Freedom

By
Anne Adams

John
Winthrop, governor of the Massachusetts Bay
Colony, called her an “American Jezebel” but
others have seen her as a courageous advocate
for religious freedom in a restrictive society.
Yet despite how history views her, Anne
Hutchinson was indeed unique for her time, in
not just in holding divergent religious views
but in suffering the banishment that came from
having them.

Anne
Marbury was born in England in 1591, the
daughter of a dissatisfied and outspoken
clergyman. His complaints that the Church of
England appointed unfit ministers brought brief
imprisonment so he eventually ceased speaking
out. Anne was educated at home, where she
immersed herself in her father’s theological
library, and inspired by this and her father’s
example, she developed the courage and
independence that she would later demonstrate.

Anne
married Will Hutchinson at age 21 and as they
began their family, Anne became drawn to a
minister named John Cotton who came to support
the Puritan movement. .

The Church
of England had been established some years
earlier as part of a separation from the Roman
Catholic Church when King Henry VIII sought a
divorce to marry the woman he hoped would give
him the son he lacked. In the years that
followed England had had a dedicated Protestant
boy-king, an adamantly Catholic queen and then a
moderate Protestant queen who tried to reduce
the animosity between her Protestant and
Catholic subjects. Yet there were still those
who believed of the Church of England, which was
supposed to be Protestant, had too much Roman
Catholic influence in doctrine and worship. This
group wanted to “purify” it of that influence –
hence their name.

Anne and
Will Hutchinson and their children traveled
several miles from their home on Sundays to hear
John Cotton preach. He advocated Puritan
doctrines, but also spoke about the possibility
of attaining religious and economic freedom in
the new world of America . Then when Cotton led
a group to the new Puritan-based colony at
Massachusetts Bay in 1634 the Hutchinson family
was among them, joining some 21,000 other
Puritans who would immigrate to America from
1630 to 1642...

Besides
their desire to “purify” the church from what
they saw as too much of a Catholic influence the
Puritans also advocated a simpler system of
worship with fewer sacraments. However, once in
Massachusetts , the Puritan church-centered
colonial government began to take seriously
their example to be a “city on a hill” or
example for their faith to the world and that
meant there had to be strictly enforced rules of
conduct. It also meant that they felt they could
not tolerate any sort of deviation from the
established Puritan church beliefs and that was
where Anne faced her challenge.

Anne’s
beliefs came partly from John Cotton’s sermons
but also from her own study and thought. Among
her beliefs that varied from the Puritan
doctrines were the concepts that salvation came
through their faith alone, that enslaving the
Indians was wrong and that God revealed himself
directly to each believer without the need of
clergy. This last idea could be construed as a
threat to the authority of the Puritan theocracy
that was Massachusetts Bay Colony but what
seemed even more of a threat to them was that it
was a woman who held the view. For it was widely
accepted that only men had the intelligence and
perception necessary to deal with theology and
that women were not only incapable of such
mental ability but that their only proper
occupation was that of wife and mother. .

However,
Anne did not start out publicly dissenting and
for several years lived quietly and
unobtrusively. She expressed her views only in
her home and to other women when they gathered
to discuss the sermons or Biblical topics. Many
women liked the intellectual stimulation they
received in the discussions but as more and more
women attended her meetings they attracted the
concerns of the colony officials.

“That
though women might meet… to pray and edify one
another,” wrote Winthrop, “yet such an
assembly…where sixty or more did meet every
week, and one woman (in a prophetical way, by
resolving questions of doctrine, and expounding
the scripture) took upon her the whole exercise,
was agreed to be disorderly, and without rule.”
So Anne was first charged with conducting
disorderly meetings, yet as time passed
gradually the Puritans began to feel her beliefs
were not only heretical but also seditious.
Winthrop defined their opposition: “The two
capital errors with which she was charged were
these: That the Holy Ghost dwells personally in
a justified person and that nothing of
sanctification can help to evidence to believers
their justification.” Winthrop firmly believed
women should be submissive and in his diary he
called her an “American jezebel” a reference to
the evil queen in the Bible who persecuted God’s
prophets. This was an interesting term to use
for a woman widely loved and respected for her
Christian service to her neighbors just because
she expressed her religions opinions.

Originally
Anne had enjoyed support from some of the
colonial leaders but gradually this faded. John
Cotton recanted and even came to criticize her
as she was brought to trial. Yet although she
defended herself ably, citing appropriate
scriptures, it was eventually her own remarks
that condemned her. As historian Samuel Eliot
Morrison put it: “She declared, even boasted, of
her personal revelations from the Almighty, and
that was to confess the worst….” The Puritans
taught that there was no divine revelation after
the Bible was closed, and so she was sentenced
to banishment from the colony as “being a woman
not fit for our society.”

After her
banishment and excommunication Anne and her
family left Massachusetts Bay Colony in early
1638 and settled in what is now Rhode Island ,
then moved to Long Island , There in 1642 she
and her family were massacred in an Indian raid,
an end that no doubt made some Puritan leaders
see as a divine judgment.

Some
historians feel that the Puritans felt they had
to stifle dissent because it presented a test or
even a challenge to their authority, and this
they could not tolerate when community unity and
conformity was so important in a remote
wilderness. Yet what the Puritans may have seen
as a threat, history may well view as a
demonstration of the courage of one woman with a
sense of freedom.